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Tuscany is the birthplace of the Renaissance and world-class art, architecture and culture. It has also produced some of the finest wines and dishes in the history of Italian cuisine. But Tuscany is also home to the cuisine of poor Tuscan peasantry, known as cucina povera.

Stanley Tucci starts his exploration of Tuscany with his parents Stan and Joan. He then meets chef and restaurateur Fabio Picchi, who shows him Tuscany’s signature dish, the magnificent bistecca alla fiorentina. Renaissance scholar Elisabetta Di Giugno then takes Stanley on a wine bar crawl, starting with Florence’s first bar to reopen its wine window.

Out in the countryside, Stanley attends a threshing festival to celebrate the importance and tradition of the lowly loaf. Back in Florence, Stanley samples three dishes that use stale bread as the key ingredient: ribollita, pappa al pomodoro and panzanella. Attending an arts festival, he comes across a fancy appetizer of foamed panzanella. Inspired by this transformation of a ‘poor’ Tuscan classic into an aristocratic dish, he visits the creator of the foam at her wonderful new restaurant.

Finally, Stanley meets Fabio again in the port city of Livorno, where he makes cacciucco, a traditional fish stew made from the fishermen’s leftovers cooked in tomatoes. It seems to Stanley that cacciucco is the perfect embodiment of Tuscan cooking – making the best of limited ingredients, and rooted in a poor fishing community and Livorno’s immigrant past.